Genre Trouble and Extreme Cinema

Film Theory at the Fringes of Contemporary Art Cinema

Develops a novel approach to contemporary film theory by building a bridge between seemingly incompatible scholars and concepts

Highlights the significance of extreme cinema for film theory, genre theory, and film history

Links the study of film theories of the senses to film genre theory, establishing new parallels between Linda Williams’s “body genres” and contemporary iterations of them, with particular attention paid to the burgeoning field of pornography studies

This volume re-evaluates theories of genre and spectatorship in light of a critic-defined tendency in recent art cinema, coined ‘extreme cinema’. In Genre Trouble and Extreme Cinema, Bordun argues that the films of Mexican director Carlos Reygadas and French director Catherine Breillat expand generic classifications. Bordun contends that their films make it apparent that genre is not established prior to the viewing of a work but is recollected and assembled by spectators in ways that matter for them in both personal and experiential terms. The author deploys contemporary film theories on the senses, both phenomenological and affect theory, and partakes in close readings of the films’ forms and narratives. The book thus adds to the present literature on extreme cinema and film theory, yet sets itself apart by fully deploying genre theory alongside the methodological and stylistic approaches of Stanley Cavell, Vivian Sobchack, Laura U. Marks, and Eugenie Brinkema.

“Genre Trouble and Extreme Cinema is a fearless and writerly exploration of films that defy easy modes of generic classification—an impulse and a practice that too often diminishes the insights and effects of the films that we nevertheless want most to prize. Bordun takes us directly to the work itself and offers refreshingly nuanced readings of the films of Breillat and Reygadas. Through beautifully detailed close readings, Bordun shows us the films in all of their sophistication while teaching us something even greater: namely, how to regard our complexity. He is reminding us of the value of staying with the things we do not understand, how to resist our impulse to assimilate too quickly, too completely, what we do not yet comprehend—or think we cannot fathom—to what we think we already know. Is this not what we want serious art and serious criticism to do?” (Brian Price, University of Toronto, Canada)